Is your B2C e-commerce selling in the EU? Avoid €2 million fine

Yes, you're right, this is a GDPR little brother. Effective since May 2022.

Sanctions and penalties

The penalties system is similar to the one introduced in GDPR.

You can be fined up to 4% of your annual turnover, or up to EUR 2 million where turnover information is unavailable.

New requirements for e-commerce owners

Product has a promotional price? You have to show the lowest price from the last 30 days before the price reduction.
It's not allowed to sell products with very similar packaging but with different compositions in different countries.
You must inform the customer what is the main criteria of the search results ranking. It must be communicated if the higher listing can be bought.
Your shop has to provide a telephone number as well as an email address.
Customer protection rules now also apply to situations where a customer doesn't pay but provides personal data in exchange for a digital product. This means that a customer will be able to cancel the purchase within 14 days without providing a reason and e-commerce needs to clear personal data then.
You must ensure that reviews are authentic and, communicate to customers what measures have you taken to ensure that.

Great impact

Similar to GDPR, Omnibus Directive has a major impact on the whole e-commerce industry.

Implementing the rules are often quite costly and risky. It's not defined in detail how the rules should be implemented in real life.

Even popular e-commerce platforms are not yet ready and do not provide the functionality required by the directive.

The Goal

As usual, the goal is noble - to protect consumer rights when shopping online. For example to avoid merchants setting fake price promotions before black Friday.

But are the means justifiable?